Senate Urged to Move Child Porn Law

SANDRA SOBIERAJ

Published 7:00 pm, Tuesday, October 22, 2002

Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) _ Seventy-five percent of America's children use the Internet and are vulnerable to online predators, President Bush said Wednesday as he prodded the Senate to "get moving" on legislation outlawing computer simulations of child pornography.

"A technology that brings knowledge also brings obscenity and danger," Bush said at a White House forum on child exploitation.

"With the Internet, pornography is now instantly available to any child who has a computer. And in the hands of the wrong people, in the hands of incredibly wicked people, the Internet is a tool that lures children into real danger."

Bush called on the Democrat-controlled Senate to follow the Republican House's lead and approve a bill bypassing a Supreme Court decision that struck down a ban of computer simulations of child pornography.

"The Senate needs to get moving and join the House in providing our prosecutors with the tools necessary to help shut down this obscenity, these crimes against children," Bush said.

He also offered practical advice to parents:

_Tell children to never share personal information or passwords to anyone online and never agree to meet with someone who chats them up online, "unless mom or dad is with them."

_Keep computers in a central location in the home and check up on kids' online activity.

"A mother or dad ought to pay just as much attention to their child when they're on the Internet as if they're in a playground, or walking in the mall," Bush said in a speech to local, state and federal law enforcement personnel working on the issue of online child exploitation.

Earlier, he presided over a smaller roundtable discussion with experts, one of whom described in explicit detail the kinds of predators _ nuclear engineers, priests, parents, "everything you can possibly imagine" _ who seek out children online or post child pornography on the Internet.

"Sick world," Bush said.

He asked for numbers: "Are we talking about millions and millions of people?" Those around the Roosevelt Room table said no one knows.

Wednesday's events were a follow-up to the Oct. 2 White House Conference on Missing, Exploited and Runaway Children, where Bush cited a University of New Hampshire study said that in the last year, one in five children between the ages of 10 and 17 were sexually propositioned online.

In April, the Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional and too broad part of a 1996 law intended primarily to stop pornography produced through computer wizardry that was not available when the court placed child pornography outside First Amendment protection in 1982.

Free-speech advocates and pornographers challenged the ban on material that appears to be a child in a sexually explicit situation or that is advertised to convey the impression that someone under age 18 is involved.

The bill Bush wants the Senate to approve would prohibit the production, distribution and possession of any visual depiction, real or electronic, of prepubescent children engaged in sexually explicit conduct.